


The Remnents

by Ibyte13



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF, The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Last of Us (Video Games) Setting, Angst, Battle Buddies (Achievement Hunter), Blood and Gore, F/F, F/M, Found Family, M/M, Major Character Injury, Multi, Mutual Pining, Team Nice Dynamite, Team OG
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:54:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25860169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ibyte13/pseuds/Ibyte13
Summary: When an outbreak happens, there are three kinds of people: those that run, those that fight, and those that adapt. Ryan and Jeremy adapted. They don't know when, they don't know why, and they don't know how, but they are determined to make the most of their second chance.
Relationships: Gavin Free/Lindsay Tuggey Jones/Michael Jones, Jack Pattillo/Geoff Ramsey, Jeremy Dooley/Ryan Haywood
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	The Remnents

_Flames. Burning. The smell of cooked human flesh and burnt hair._

“Stay with me Jeremy! We’re almost out of it!”

_The slam of a door. Fresh, cool air. The sound of a burning building. Shrieks. Human. Less than human. Flood lights._

“Freeze! On your knees!”  
“There are infected behind us! Please! We need help!” Ryan yells to the man pointing the rifle at him.  
“I said on your knees!”   
“Please. Someone started a fire, we barely made it out.” Ryan says, collapsing to his knees with Jeremy’s half limp figure hanging off him. “P-please help. I-I don’t want to die.” Ryan says, voice hoarse from the smoke, eyes tearing up.  
“Hands where I can see them.” The soldier says, slowly approaching Ryan and Jeremy. Ryan slowly lowers Jeremy to the ground and barely gets his hands up before the soldier hits him with the butt of his gun.  
“Infected!” fading gunshots and the thump of bodies hitting the ground.

_The smell of a hospital room. Hey buddy, how are you feeling today? A little tired. I think they took too much blood earlier. Just a little longer, then we can see the stars again. Jeremy’s innocent smile. Warmth. Brief happiness._

_Blood. Fire. Jeremy? Jeremy, where are you! I’m over here. Coughing. Smoke. Inhuman shrieks. Radio chatter. The infected have breached containment. I repeat, the infected have breached con- ahh! A dead line. Jeremy, we have to get out of here. The building is coming down and the infected are gonna swarm us any minute. You don’t have to tell me twice._

_Running. The creaking of burning beams. A booming crash. Cinders blind the eyes. Jeremy! Jeremy, are you alright? Ry~ Jeremy! Come on buddy, I’m gonna get you out of here. Stay with me! We’re gonna see the stars again together, but I need you to stay awake. Jeremy!_

I woke up in a cage again.

It was worse than the last one. The last one at least had a bed. This one was nothing more than a dog kennel that got repurposed. A guard stood just outside the door.

“Hey.” I croaked. He glanced out of the corner of his eye. “Where a-am I?”   
“A holding cell.” He said. I laughed.  
“A holding cell huh? Where?”  
“I can’t tell you that.”  
“Why, it’s not like I’m going to try and escape.” He glanced my way again, his blue eyes full of suspicion.  
“Stop talking.”  
“What? It’s not like there’s anything else to do.” I leaned against the wall. “Could you at least tell me if the other person I was with is alright?” His face softened.  
“He wasn’t doing too great. Broken leg, smoke inhalation, the works. From what I understand over the chatter is that he’s recovering in another holding area.”  
“… Thank you.”

We went back to silence. I don’t know how long I was there but soon someone came and moved me to a proper room. It wasn’t much better than the dog kennel I had been in, but at least it had a bed. It was all concrete with heavy duty pipes running along the walls and ceiling. It struck me as very heavy duty considering the treatment I had received since I volunteered for the program. Two days passed in tedium before someone I had never seen before came in.

“Cuff him.” They said. They sounded feminine, but getting it wrong could mean I get killed, or worse, thrown to the infected. I stayed silent and complied. They seemed surprised. Like they expected me to act like an infected or something. After I had been cuffed to the pipes, they pulled up a chair from outside and sat down in front of me. They were a general considering how decorated their uniform was. To add to that, they were in formal uniform, so this was most likely an inspection. I’d seen their types come through before. They don’t really know what’s going on here, but they like to think they do just to make themselves feel better. They existed before Outbreak Day, and they sure as hell existed after. “So, when did you get bit?” They asked. That threw me for a loop.  
“What do you mean when did I get bit? I’ve been in here the past two days.” They looked puzzled.  
“The doctors tell me that there are several bites along your right side.

_Pain. Fear. Screeching of runners and clickers. Right behind us. Gotta move. Gotta keep moving. Jeremy!_

“I-I don’t…” I went into a panic. I’d been bitten. But that means I’m actually immune. What about Jeremy? If I’d gotten bitten, then he did for sure. Is he alright? Why haven’t they let me see him yet? “Where is Jeremy? I want to see him. Where is he! Is he alright? Why haven’t you let me visit him!” No one answered my questions. I strained at the cuffs above my head. The familiar faces of doctors rushed in.  
“Calm down, Jeremy is fine. Everything is fine.”  
“NO! IT’S NOT! I was BITTEN, and so was JEREMY and you won’t let me SEE HIM!” I shouted, the cuffs creaking.  
“We’ll take you to see Jeremy after the General is gone. You just gotta answer a few more questions Ryan. It’s alright!” The cuffs failed.

The run was a blur. I remember knocking over the general’s chair and making a beeline for what looked like an office. I found something there, but it’s all fuzzy when I think about it. Before they could catch up, I was gone. Running down the hallway, towards Jeremy. The guards outside his room almost caught me, but a quick jab and a body check later solved that problem. I busted into the room they were keeping Jeremy in. He was just sitting there, staring out the window, no shirt, but his chest and parts of his arms were wrapped in bandages and his right leg was in a cast. I huffed in the doorway, catching my breath.

“Ryan? What are you doing here? Why are you winded?” He asked, whipping his head around to me.  
“Oh thank gods, you’re alright!” I ran over and pulled the small man into a hug.  
“What’s the matter Ryan?”   
“Something happened. I got bitten in the fire I think and they wouldn’t let me see you.”  
“Wait, slow down. You got bitten in the fire?”  
“Yeah.” I breathed out, catching my breath.  
“Are you sure?” He said, he held me at arm’s length and was examining my face.  
“Yeah, down my right side they said.” Jeremy gulped and pulled up my shirt before gasping.  
“Oh, Ryan…”  
“What? How bad is it?” I asked, my panic rising again. I hadn’t had a mirror, and it was in a place I couldn’t see, so I didn’t even know the extent of the damage.   
“It’s, bad. But that was at least three days ago, and most people turn within hours.”  
“What does it look like?” I asked, scared of the answer. He pushed my shirt up a little more, hands soft on my skin.  
“It’s bumpy, like there are obvious teeth marks. And the skin around them is purple, like almost black purple, but I can’t tell if it’s bruising or infection.” He put a little pressure on one of the bruises and I yelped in pain. How had I not noticed this before? “Oh! I’m sorry. I barely put any pressure, but they look really bad.” That’s when the general and the doctors burst into the room.  
“Cuff him! Make sure both of them are restrained!” The general bellowed. The doctors rushed to stand in between the soldiers and us.  
“These two are our best test subjects and they volunteered when this first broke out. They’ve been here for years and this is the first instance of an outburst.” Our regular caretaker, Macy, stated.  
“This is also the only time they’ve been bitten no? Outside a controlled test? They obviously need to be taken care of.”  
“Well yes, but!”  
“No. You have been relieved of duty, they are in my custody now.”  
“These are injured individuals, you can’t just force them into lockup with their injuries!” one of the newer doctors protested.  
“Actually, I can. Cuff them.”

We didn’t try and struggle. There were too many of them and we were in a corner. But you can bet no one liked the fact that general-mc-asshole decided he was taking over operations that day. Jeremy and I were transferred to the holding cells that they generally kept the infected subjects in. The ones who didn’t make it through testing. They were small, cold, and damp with nothing to sit on, or even anywhere to relieve yourself. They were connected to each other by bars, but the wall to the hallway was solid concrete with steel doors that had no windows. Thankfully, they put us next to each other.

“What do you think they’re gonna do with us now?” Jeremy asked, just after we were left alone in our cells and he had recovered from the pain of them jostling him into his cell.  
“I don’t know. We’ve been here so long. I don’t even remember what the rest of the world looks like now that most of it is dead.”  
“You ain’t missing much.” Jeremy said.  
“Oh that’s right. You were what? Five? When the outbreak happened?”  
“Yeah. It was terrifying. I don’t remember much but I remember my house getting burned to the ground and having to leave my cat behind. After that we made our way to the coast and managed to get in the Boston QZ. Not a friendly place.”  
“Ah, the Boston QZ. After the outbreak, I was in the Atlanta quarantine zone for a while. I’d already worked for the government, so it made sense that I became a FEDRA soldier there. Then the call went out through the ranks that FEDRA was looking for a cure and was asking able bodied soldiers to volunteer. So, I did.” I reminisced. Jeremy chuckled.  
“Yeah and that’s where we met. I was FEDRA too remember? The zone was going to shit, and I asked who you guys were. Then the rest is history. What do you think the general wants to do with us?” I thought about it for a moment.  
“I couldn’t tell you for certain. I’ve seen a lot of their type and they haven’t gotten better since the outbreak. Best case scenario, knowing general-mc-asshole’s type, we’ll get thrown outside the Augusta QZ, if we’re lucky. Worst case, they’ll kill us straight out. That’s probably what they are trying to decide right now.”  
“That’s really uplifting Ryan, thanks.”  
“Hey you asked what I thought, not what I hoped.”  
“I just wish they didn’t mirror my own so closely.”  
“We’ll be ok. I promise.”  
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

We sat in silence then. Before long it was lights out and I knew the whole compound would go dark. It was just past lights out, when Macy came creeping to our holding cells holding two backpacks with two pairs of boots attached to them. I was surprised at first when the flashlight swept into the room.

“Ryan? Jeremy?” Macy whispered.  
“Macy? Is that you? What are you doing here? It’s lights out.” I answered.  
“They’ve decided to dispose of you two via a firing squad tomorrow morning.” She said. She handed me the flashlight as she pulled something out of the backpack in her hand.  
“What?! Really?” Jeremy whispered from the other cell.   
“Yes really. So I’m breaking you out.”  
“Macy, they’ll kill you! Or at the very least throw you out of the QZ.” I said taken back. I liked Macy, I didn’t want to see her put out on our account.  
“That’s the thing Ryan. We aren’t in the QZ anymore.”  
“What do you mean we aren’t in the QZ anymore?” Jeremy asked.  
“After the fire, the main facility was overrun. We had to evacuate and moved everyone to the Providence facility.”  
“What, so we’re in Rhode Island now?” I said.  
“What’s left of it, yeah.”  
“Then…the Augusta QZ?”  
“Gone. We barely made it out with you two.” She said, worry and anguish painted across her face.  
“Does that mean…oh no.” Jeremy said. My eyes were blurry with tears. There were so many kids in that facility. We used to play with them and look after them. To know they were all gone now. Dead or worse, infected, was not something we took lightly. I looked to Jeremy for comfort to find that he was crying too.  
“I know it hurts boys. Trust me, I’ve been reconciling it for the past couple of weeks…”  
“Wait, wait, couple of weeks?” I said, garbled through the lump in my throat.  
“We had to keep you under. None of the doctors wanted to. We pulled you out as early as we could after we got here. The general was none too pleased to hear both of you were awake let me tell you that.” The thought of general mc-asshole was sobering enough to get my sobbing under control.   
“So what? They wanted to keep us under to study and then kill us when we weren’t useful!?” Jeremy said, white knuckling the bars.   
“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.” Macy said.  
“That bastard!” Jeremy slammed his fist against the bars. The loud noise made me jump. Macy worriedly glanced towards the door.  
“I would love to lament and complain to and with you two, but we need to get you out of here as quickly as possible. Give you enough time to get some distance before they find out you’re missing in the morning.”  
“How are we managing that? There’s no way we can get far enough with Jeremy’s broken leg.” I said.  
“I have an idea for that. I managed to snag a set of keys on my way down here from the motor depot. It’s got a skeleton crew right now. I don’t think that Jeremy can sneak into the motor pool, with his leg and all, but I can take him and meet you at the back entrance.” She pulled the backpack from her shoulder and shuffled around in it. “I… grabbed you…a map…ah here it is! Yes, ok so this is where I’ll take Jeremy.” She pointed to a door down an alley from the motor pool. “and this is where you can sneak in with little to no resistance.” She pointed to a maintenance hallway at the back of the motor pool. She looked at her watch. “But we have to go now, shift change is in thirty. You might just make it when no one is there. There’s a change of clothes in both of these for you. Get dressed quick, I’ll wait outside.” With that, Macy left one of the bags with me, and brough the other one to Jeremy before stepping back outside.

The clothes were kind of ratty and threadbare, but clean. I suspected that Macy had been planning this for awhile. I pulled on a maroon t-shirt and blue jeans, stuffing the leather coat and what looked to be a second set of clothes back in the bag. Macy had also managed to get a watch for me that still worked. I slung the bag over my shoulder and looked to see how Jeremy was getting on. He had managed to get on a black tank top and purple plaid button down, but he was having trouble with getting his pants over the other leg. I knocked on the door and Macy let me out. Then I went and helped out Jeremy. Before long we were sneaking along the hallways of the compound. It looked like this was outfitted to be more of a military facility than a research facility. The rooms that we were in looked the same as the holding cells in any other facility, but that is where the similarity ended. It was all concrete and cold, nothing like the warm halls of the facility we were at before. We split off at one of the maintenance corridors. I made my way through the warren that made up the maintenance sectors, using my flashlight and the map to get to the motor pool. I had to duck a couple of guards, but for the most part it was easy sailing.

The motor pool was another story.

There were so many guards. Hanging around, shootin’ the shit. I froze after I cracked the door. It was loud, and I heard the crash of glass nearby, as if one of them had thrown a bottle. I peeked out to see a concrete barrier directly in front of the door. I scuttled out and took a better survey of my surroundings.

There were ten of them off to my right near the doors to the rest of the compound. They were in fact drinking and I saw shards of glass littered on the ground and liquid on the wall next to the door. It seemed like they were the only ones here and they were clustered pretty far away from the vehicles, but they were bound to notice if one of the cars started up and drove away. That’s assuming that they didn’t catch me looking for the car that the keys went to. Time to improvise.

My team didn’t call me the Vagabond for nothing.

I picked up one of the shards of glass and chucked it across the way from me, towards the cars. One of the guards heard it and stood up to go check out the sound. _Typical._ I made my way to the left, keeping my head down below the concrete barriers lining the side. I stalked the one guard and waited for him to dip out of sight of the rest before taking him down. It was rather loud, and I couldn’t keep a good hold on him, so he got some jabs to my side in before passing out from lack of oxygen. I was a bit rusty, sue me. The noise got the attention of the rest of the idiots, however. I grabbed the guy’s pistol and scrambled away under one of the nearby cars. Five pairs of boots came up on the one guard out on the floor. One tried to wake him up, the other four pulled out their guns and started roaming the place. I crawled and darted my way through the motor pool. They fell one by one, and I hid their sleeping forms under the cars and behind barriers until the five still at the table remained. I observed them from behind a jeep. As I watched, all of them poured shots of a clear liquid, I assumed vodka or some such, and down them with a cheer. I shook my head, I had never liked alcohol, even before the outbreak. Now it just served as a major distraction when the whole world is trying to kill you. Exhibit A: right now. I wasn’t trying to kill them, but I knew that they would notice if one of the cars started and drove off. Especially considering their buddies should still be over here, and the ones I took out were the least drunk of the bunch. None of them were sober.

I took a chance and beeped the key fob. I heard a beep a little ways behind me and looked to see one of the jeep’s inside lights come on. I looked back over at the drunken guards. One had passed out and the rest seemed unbothered. So, I snuck my way over to the jeep. On my way there I had an idea. I went around to the guards I had hidden and grabbed all the spare ammo they had, as well as an extra gun for Jeremy. Where we were headed, we’d need them. Once I got to the car, I carefully got into it, keeping my head low. I knew when I started it, it was likely to attract at least one of the remaining guards, but there wasn’t much I could do about it other than book it and hope we got out before the compound went on lockdown. I started the car, and sure enough, I heard shouting from the guards. As I backed up, I saw them jump up and try and run after me, but they only ended up stumbling and falling on the blacktop. I sped away to the alley that Macy had indicated. I saw the door cracked, and as I got closer, I leaned out of the window and called to Macy softly. She pushed the door open, Jeremy in tow. She helped get him into the back seat, elevating his leg. I passed him the gun once he was settled.

“You remember how to use one of these right?” I teased. Jeremy threw me a look in the mirror. I chuckled. “Where to now Macy?”  
“There is an old gate on the eastern perimeter, only thing holding it shut is a chain and padlock. Guards stroll by there every hour or so, just to make sure no infected are harrying the thing, but we should be home free assuming we can get to it in the next 20 minutes or so.” She said.  
“Shouldn’t be an issue. This place isn’t that big, is it?” She shook her head.  
“It should take us five minutes if we don’t encounter anyone. Just follow my lead.”

She directed us through back alleys and abandoned roads. We were almost caught by a couple of soldiers trolling the eastern perimeter. But I killed the engine before they got close enough to hear it and they moved on. It took us ten minutes to get to the gate. When we got there, Macy hopped out and unlocked it. It was just wide enough for the jeep. I was concerned the side mirrors were going to hit the fence. After we were through, she came up to the drivers side windows.

“Alright boys, this is as far as I go.”  
“Come with us.”  
“I’m sorry?” Macy said, eyebrow raised.  
“Yeah! Come with us!” Jeremy chirped from the back.   
“I can’t. You don’t need me bogging you down. I’ll be fine here.”  
“No, Macy, they will kill you for letting us go. Plus, the likelihood of us seeing each other again after this is slim to none. We could use your help.” I said with a nod to Jeremy’s leg. Macy shook her head.  
“Listen, my wife is here. My family is here. I love you boys, and if I could get them out of here with you, I would in a heartbeat. But the fact is that I can’t. Not yet anyway.” She chewed her lip, thinking. “I’ll tell you what. I heard about a place in the Sierra Nevada, out in California. Where the trees are as tall as mountains. I will meet you there after I get my family out of here. Deal?”  
“Deal.” Jeremy and I said in unison.  
“Alright now get! Any longer and you’ll get caught for sure.” She said, slapping the back of the jeep. I saw tears in her eyes as we drove away, her and the compound disappearing as we drove into the forest.

“California then?” I said to Jeremy.  
“Seems like.”  
“I always wanted to move to LA.” I said. Jeremy just laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of my AH/The Last of Us au! It's my first fan fic that's longer than a few paragraphs. Let me know how I'm doing and if you want to read more of my writing check out my tumblr bytewryte.tumblr.com


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